


Rain - a Gospels Vignette

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-12-31
Updated: 1999-12-31
Packaged: 2018-11-20 06:50:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11330679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: This is a little vignette that takes place in Spike's wonderful Krycek/Byers universe of 'John', 'Gospels: John 1:23' and 'Gospels: Acts 4:6'.





	Rain - a Gospels Vignette

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

Rain - a Gospels Vignette By Jessica Harris

Title: Rain - a gospels vignette  
By: Jessica Harris, inspired by Spike  
Rating: Mild R, K/B, 1/1  
Notes: This is a little vignette that takes place in Spike's wonderful Krycek/Byers universe of 'John', 'Gospels: John 1:23' and 'Gospels: Acts 4:6'. They are lovely stories and you should go read them *right now* at  
http://avalon.net/~nonie/spike/xfiles.htm   
if you haven't already. And thanks to Spike for letting me play in her universe, and to Nonie as well for pushing me to post this. The rest of my stuff can be found at:  
http://avalon.net/~nonie/jharris/jhindex.html   
Disclaimer: I am a copyright nightmare. But it earns me no cash.  
Feedback: I crave it like a drug.   


* * *

==========================================  
Rain  
==========================================

John lay cramped in the back-seat of the car for what seemed like a long time, Alex naked and asleep in his arms. The rain drummed hollowly on the roof and streaked heavily down the windows, reducing the woods outside to a green-black blur in the twilight. Alex slept deeply, snoring a little, and John thought to himself that he could count on one hand the number of times he'd seen Alex do this, let himself fall so far into defenceless sleep. Then he felt vaguely guilty for the one-hand thought, as though it somehow slighted the man in his arms.

This particular guilt added its own thin strand to the tangle of emotions that kept him from sleep in spite of the road-weary buzz behind his eyes. It joined his guilt at keeping such a secret from his friends and comrades, his guilt at doing this at all, loving a man who they all knew as a traitor; joined his anger at himself that he'd come so willingly at Alex's midnight call, had driven all night and all day to bail him out of jail with no explanation but Alex's strained "Please!"; joined his worry at what had happened to Alex to land him exhausted and dirty in a small-town jail, and the faint warm glow that Alex had called *him* to the rescue, and the edgy thought of just how long it had been since Alex last called him, or contacted him, or appeared at his window in the dead of night with those mis-matched reaching hands that stripped away his clothes and all his defences...

He was sick of himself these days, sick of all the complicated feelings that tied him in knots inside, making his head noisier and noisier, while outwardly he grew more and more quiet and still until even the guys noticed it. Langley had taken to teasing him mercilessly, prodding and poking and trying to get a rise out of him, while Frohike was suddenly paternal, cuffing him gently on the side of the head and gruffly saying "everything all right in there, John-boy?"

And he had sniped back half-heartedly at Langley, and reassured Frohike that he was, in fact, all right, and begun to dread the mirror in the bathroom for the bambi-in-the-headlights stare it reflected back at him. He wished he could feel just one way about it all, happy or miserable, angry or excited or appalled or indifferent, just not all of them, not all at once, each feeling cancelling the others out until all that was left was a kind of frozen paralysis.

And Mulder... Mulder has started looking at him curiously too these days, something that could be either sympathy or suspicion in his eyes as he works obvious openings into the conversation, openings which John ignores. John has begun to hate him a little, a dark and unfamiliar feeling tensing in him when Mulder is near. John can't say any of the things he wants to. He wants to say to Mulder "Whatever you've done to him, that he can't forget you, undo it please, let me have him, I love him."; wants to ask just what it was he *did* do to him, and if he could show John how to do it too; wants to ask him how it's possible, how he can refuse to love Alex. And if this too is a secret he could share, for John is beginning to experience his own love for the dark-haired man as an anxiety, a weight, something slowly crushing the life out of him.

And as if following the thought Alex jerked into sudden panicked wakefulness, throwing off John's gentle embrace and pinning him roughly to the seat with a growl.

"Alex!" cried John, "Alex, it's me! John! It's all right!"

"Where are my clothes?!" demanded Alex, face fierce even through the puffiness of sleep, and John gulped, and said:

"You - you left them outside."

He had made John pull over as soon as they were free of the small backwoods town, throwing his door open before they were entirely stopped and hurling himself out into the downpour where he furiously stripped off his grubby clothes and threw them out into the rain and mud and dim woods around them. John had struggled out after him, helplessly saying "Alex - ", and Krycek had spun and grabbed him and pushed him into the back seat of the car, followed him with his own compact muscular weight, burrowing in alongside John, twining his wet limbs in with John's now hardly drier ones. And John had felt himself begin his usual inevitable surrender, but after thoroughly entangling them Alex had simply mashed his face against John's chest and fallen almost instantly asleep.

Now, as the confusion of sleep cleared from his face, he stopped fighting against John and began a more deliberate movement. John felt himself begin to stir against the thigh that nudged itself between his own and the hands that were now stripping his clothing from him. But the worry and the noise in his head were too strong for him to just give in, and he caught Alex's hands and said "What happened, Alex? Can you - won't you - *please* tell me."

And at that Alex rolled off and flung himself as far as he could to the other side of the seat, where he stared sullenly out the window at the rain. John felt his dread increase - he'd never seen Alex like this, and he wondered what they'd done to him, deliverance-fuelled visions of back-woods depravity sending good-bumps down his spine. He touched Alex's arm lightly, and Alex shook him off, face darkening, then burst out:

"Goddam redneck motherfucking backwoods hicktown sheriff caught me trying to steal his fucking car."

"What!?" said John incredulously.

"I didn't *know* it was his fucking car, all right? It wasn't marked. And I didn't know that the hill-billy shack he'd parked it outside was his mother's house, or that she sits in the front window with a pair of goddam binoculars to watch the neighbours. I just needed a fucking car, all right? I'd been going full-out for two days to get across the state line on the back-roads, and my car threw a piston in the hills. So I've just got the car open and I'm climbing in when suddenly I'm surrounded by all these angry *geese*, and when I look up from nearly having my eyes pecked out, there's this toothless old hag with a shot-gun pointed right at me. And she makes me get down on the ground, and shouts until her equally ancient and toothless hired help comes over and ties my wrists with an *apron*. And then they march me down the road to the jail, along with the goddam geese, and they haul the sherriff out of the bar across the street and he arrests me, once he stops laughing long enough. And the jail is just two tiny cells, and it smells like the last thing that had been in it was a *goat*. And then I find out it *was* a goat - they put the redneck sheriff's hill-billy mother's fucking *billygoat* in the other cell at night so it doesn't get out and eat the neighbour's vegetable patch. So I spent the whole night with some crazed stinking *farm animal* trying to get at me through the bars, and - and what is *your* problem?!!"

And John couldn't help it. After all the driving, and the worrying, and the chasing around inside his own head, the picture of his dark and dangerous Alex locked in a cell with the sheriff's mother's billy-goat was too much for him. And he laughed.

And kept laughing, relief and hilarity sweeping through him in one unstoppable tide, wiping out everything else. And Alex, after one truly murderous glare, smiled a little, then a lot, and then he was laughing too, they were both laughing, choking and gasping and howling together in the back of the car while the rain just kept coming down.

Finally Alex stopped laughing and leaned in against John's neck, giving a little groan that had enough real pain in it that John sobered too. "I'm getting too old for all of this," said Alex softly, and John kissed him gently, and squirmed out of the rest of his own clothes and pressed Alex down on the seat again, moving in as close as he could, belly to belly and cock to cock, feeling Alex's pulse speed and his own answer it. And there they rocked gently and then not so gently against each other, kissing the whole time, sweet and messy and slow, until Alex arched and cried out helplessly beneath John. And at the sound of what might just have been his name buried somewhere in the middle of that cry, John blushed and shuddered and added his own cry to the sound of the rain. And after that they both slept, in the pellucid half-light of the rainy evening.

  


End file.
